With the rapid development of the Internet and the popularization of large-screen multi-function mobile terminals, there has been a great deal of mobile data multimedia services and various high-bandwidth multimedia services such as video conferencing, television broadcasting, video on demand, advertising, online education, interaction games, etc. It can meet the demand of multi-service for mobile users, and also bring a new business growth point for mobile operators. These mobile data multimedia services require multiple users to receive the same data at the same time. Compared with conventional data services, the mobile data multimedia service has the characteristics of large data volume, long duration and sensitivity to delay.
In order to make effective use of mobile network resources, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) proposes Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS). This service is a technology of transmission of data from one data source to multiple target mobile terminals, which can realize the sharing of the resources of the network (including the core network and the access network) and improves the utilization of the network resources (especially the air interface resources). The MBMS service defined by 3GPP can not only achieve low-rate plain text message multicast and broadcast, but also achieve high-speed multimedia broadcast and multicast, providing a wide range of video, audio and multimedia services, which can undoubtedly conform to the future trend of mobile data development and provide a better business prospect for the development of 3G.
The MBMS service is characterized by a large amount of data traffic, a long receiving duration for mobile terminals, and a constant average data rate. Due to the above characteristics, the scheduling and control signaling configuration of the MBMS service are all semi-static, that is, the scheduling information and the control signaling information of the MBMS service are unchanged in a “long-term”. Such information is transmitted through the MBMS control channel (MCCH) periodically, and collectively referred to as MCCH information. There may be multiple MCCHs in an evolved MBMS (eMBMS) system, each MCCH corresponds to a different MBSFN area, where only the control information of the MBMS service transmitted in the corresponding MBSFN area is carried.
An MBMS notification message is used to describe whether the MCCH information is changed. For a UE in idle mode (Radio Resource Control Idle, RRC Idle) or connected mode (RRC Connected), the UE only needs to monitor the MBMS notification message to know whether the MCCH information is changed. Therefore, the MCCH information may be selectively received, that is, only when the MCCH information is changed, new MCCH information is received. Since the amount of information of the MBMS notification message is much smaller than the MCCH information, user equipment (UE) selectively receiving the MCCH information, can effectively save resources and reduce power consumption. The MCCH notification information is periodically transmitted on the PDCCH of the designated MBSFN subframe, and the corresponding MBSFN subframe and transmission period are indicated by a system message (SIB13).
In the Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, a user equipment (or terminal) is notified that a session start will occur on an MBMS service or a counting request is initiated by a network side. The Downlink Control Information (DCI) and MBMS-Radio Network Temporary Identifier (M-RNTI) may be firstly transmitted on a Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH). The UE further reads a specific MCCH message according to related information in the DCI, which is called an MCCH change notification mechanism. Specific service configuration parameters such as service ID, radio link control (RLC), media access control (MAC), and physical layer configuration parameters are transmitted on the MCCH.
At present, the MBMS technology is introduced in the Release 9 of the LTE system and is enhanced in Release 10 (R10). In R9, the control signaling of the MBMS service is transmitted separately from the user data, which are respectively called Control Plane (CP) and User Plane (UP). The control plane controls the sending of the user plane data by controlling the start, update and end of the service and realizes the sending of basic MBMS service. The MBMS service is sent in an MBSFN (MBMS Single Frequency Network) area of a fixed size (which may be statically or semi-statically configured). In R10, in order to improve resource utilization of the MBMS system and facilitate operator management, MBMS technology is enhanced to mainly include: counting and priority-based preemption mechanism.
3GPP puts forward a research topic of single cell MBMS in R13 of LTE-A. FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a single cell MBMS in the related art, and a single cell MBMS service is transmitted on a physical downlink shared channel PDSCH.
The PDCCH is the indication information for parsing PDSCH data. Therefore, in the time domain of the PDCCH, before the PDSCH (data field), the first 1-4 symbols of one subframe are occupied. FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of a channel in which PDCCH occupies 3 symbols in a subframe. The information transmitted in the PDCCH is called downlink control information DCI, which is used to indicate information such as resource configuration of the PDSCH and uplink resource grant. The CRC of the tail of the PDCCH is 16 bits, and is scrambled with a specific radio network temporary identifier RNTI. The RNTI is used to identify the UE or for specific usage. The UE performs blind detection on the PDCCH of the received subframe. The blind detection is for the UE to search the bit sequence resulted from the descrambling without priori information to obtain the required control signaling. The advantage of blind detection is that no additional overhead occurs, and the disadvantage is the high detection complexity. In order to reduce the search complexity, TS36.213 defines the concept of search space. Each UE searches for control information in a particular search space, and each search space contains a set of Control Channel Elements (CCEs). The search space in LTE includes a common search space and a UE-specific search space.
The currently available solutions have the following problems. Single cell MBMS service scheduling is greatly different from multi-cell MBMS (MBSFN) scheduling: Single Cell-Multicast Control Channel (SC-MCCH) is carried and transmitted on the PDSCH, and the MCCH of the MBSFN area is carried and transmitted on a Physical Broadcast Channel (PMCH). At present, there is no method suitable for SC-MCCH resource configuration.
In the related art, there is no solution to the resource configuration method applicable to the SC-MCCH single cell multicast control channel, and no effective solution has been proposed so far.
This section provides background information related to the present invention which is not necessarily prior art.